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Parking at the Bristol Arena site has been a huge bone of contention throughout the project as a whole.

Bristol Arena

Last year a council committee deferred planning permission for the arena in protest against a decision by the then Bristol Mayor, George Ferguson, to build it without any parking spaces.

The papers for next week's meeting state that the new car park needs to be complete and ready to take vehicles on the opening day of the Arena in 2020.

The Bath Road site has the capacity for a 500 space car park and could break-even within 20 years but funding for the car park is not included in the £123.5million already secured for the arena, and the site does not yet have planning permission.

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To get around the cost problem, officers have suggested that the council could work in partnership with an outside company, which could use the car parking spaces for its workers or residents when the arena is not in use.

However, this would make it difficult for members of the public to use the spaces on arena event days.

An alternative could be that the site is fully sold to outside developers, but this would leave the council unable to control the build time or what the car park is used for in the future.

A third option is for the council to build a 200-capacity car park on the Bath Road site, which cost less but also return less revenue.

Bristol Arena parking spaces could be cut

Aside from the Bath Road site, council officers are still looking at the possibility of undertaking a “capacity neutral car park space exchange”.

This would involve the council buying and running an existing private car park - or building a new car park and taking away the equivalent number of parking spaces to fit with its strict rules on not allowing any extra parking spaces in the city centre.

The report states: “The delivery of a car park near the city centre is contrary to council policy on parking, which discourages city centre and the Bristol Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone car parking. Officers are currently examining the feasibility of a capacity neutral car park space exchange in the central area.”

Officers recommend that the council spends £500,000 on a feasibility study to explore the options further.